Writing 101: Mayhem

"Mayhem": 1) chaos, disorder, confusion, turmoil; 2) serious and deliberate injury.

Unless college is causing you some intellectual mayhem, it’s not worth the price of admission. So that will be one goal this semester: upsetting whatever intellectual applecart you rode in on. We’ll start with looking at the nature of education and go from there. Many sacred cows will be kicked along the way: issues of class, gender, race, and so on. You’ll read challenging essays in cultural theory; you’ll analyze works of short fiction and novels that seek to mess with your head; you’ll scrutinize some popular films in entirely new ways. Theory always will be put into practice.

The other goal this semester will be exercising you in critical writing. You will be expected to formulate, articulate, and defend your own analytical viewpoints on the issues and works we study. Therefore, along with considering mayhem, we will study and carry out the process of academic writing as it is done in the discipline of the humanities. That means you will learn techniques for generating ideas, drafting, revising, and producing a polished final product. Therefore, the real point of the course will be to aid in your development as a critical thinker, reader, speaker, and writer.

English 202: Literary Theory and Critical Methods

Big Picture: Better living through critical thinking.

Some Details: We will begin our inquiry into literary and cultural theory by gaining a sense of the history and prominent ideas of criticism starting with the Greeks. After that, we will concentrate on the 20th- and 21st-century developments in the field, particularly the hot debates that currently vex academic departments across the country. Theories studied will include not only such conservative standards as Old Historicism and New Criticism, but such radical (i.e. post-1960s) upstarts as Reader Response, Feminism, Deconstruction, Cultural Poetics, Post-Colonialism, and Queer Theory. Longer-standing maverick theories, such as Marxism (morphing into Post-Marxism) and Psychoanalytic Criticism (largely Freud and Lacan), will be considered as well. We will read primary texts by theorists in these areas. We will apply these theories as well to a variety of creative works and cultural phenomena. Thus, ours will be a course of theory joined with practice.

English 213: Early British Literature: Language, Power, Identity

This course will examine British literature before 1700. Our approach will be one of cultural poetics, that is, situating the literature within its specific historical context. Moreover, we will study this literature through a variety of critical lenses. Thus, we will learn the principles and the methods of several prominent analytical approaches to literature, otherwise known as critical theories. In this way, while exploring early British texts and literary history, you will be cultivating, at the same time, your critical skills as a reader, writer, thinker, and discussant. Always in this course you will be asked to state and defend your own critical opinions about the texts we read. Classroom discussions, to include small group work and formal debates, will drive the course. During the semester you will write a series of medium-length Position Papers wherein you will offer your critical analysis of the literature.

English 366 (Studies in Late 17th- and 18th-Century British Literature): Satire in Theory and Practice

In seventh-century BCE Greece, Archilochus, poet and priest of Demeter, suffered disappointed love. Betrothed to Neobule, only to have her father, Lycambes, prohibit the match, Archilochus sang a satire against their household at the festival of Demeter. Afterwards, Lycambes and Neobule, and possibly all the daughters, hanged themselves. (Wow.) In ancient Ireland, Aithirne the Importunate, poet of Ulster, wandered the countryside extorting food, shelter, wealth, and even once, from the King of Leinster, a night spent with the queen. He accomplished this not with the threat of arms, but with the threat of the bardic glam dicind–“metrical malediction.” If one and all capitulated, however, Aithirne would sing blessings of praise. (Nice work if you can get it.) The Irish word for poet, file, in fact originates from these two ideas: poison (fi) and splendor (li), blame and praise. In classical Rome, vituperatio and laus similarly became the substance of a new verse form: satura, a poem treating a variety of social and philosophical topics. Horace, Persius, and Juvenal refined–somewhat–the ancient and deadly hex into literature. Our job will be to figure out where it has gone from there.

This course will focus on early modern British satire. The 17th and 18th centuries in Britain produced a high point in satiric literature with writers such as Rochester, Dryden, Pope, and Swift–to name but a prominent male few. We will read these and other satirists in their cultural context. (Because, let’s face it, with satire you have to understand the cultural context of the text.) But we will not leave our consideration of the genre of satire stranded in these two centuries. We will explore as well satire in its ancient forms (primarily Roman satire) and in its more recent 20th and 21st century manifestations (how can we ignore the monumental work of Monty Python or Stephen Colbert?). All manner of texts will be fair game: formal verse satire, essays, novels, mock-epics, television, films–in short, whatever vehicle the satirist chooses to invade. We will ground ourselves in satiric theory, exploring the nature of function of the form. We will also familiarize ourselves with several useful analytical approaches to satiric texts, such as semiotics, cultural materialism, and gender theory. As for the work load, you will read and write a lot. The writing will take the form of both shorter informal critical response papers and longer formal critical essays. You will be responsible as well for daily and informed classroom discussion of the reading and for one group-project presentation to the class. In both your writing and your discussion, you will be expected always to state your honest critical opinion about things and be ready to defend it. Finally, for the satirists among you, there will be the opportunity to compose an original satire on a topic (victim) of your choice (not to include the instructor of this course).

English 375 (Late 17th- and 18th-Century Drama): Sex Comedy!

Even though the genre of comedy is all about sex, sex is all about social order. Beneath the merry facade of comedy, the structural underpinnings of a society are hard at work. Our basic job will be to see beneath the romp.

During the English Civil War and Commonwealth, the ruling Puritan factions closed public theater in England for nearly twenty years. This action in effect terminated the theatrical traditions of the English Renaissance. When the theaters reopened in 1660, with the return of the monarchy of Charles II, the English stage virtually had to be reinvented. This regeneration took place, in fact, as part of the larger political and economic renegotiation of the English state that occurred during the second half of the 17th century. Over the course of the 18th century, the character of English society continued to change markedly. English drama, and in particular comedy, can be read as productions wherein such cultural shifts are visible. Especially with regard to a rising merchant class and the changing status of women, comedy offers us telling portraits of English society during the period of the emerging early modern state. As ideologies change, so do the cultural productions that inculcate them. Our class will trace and investigate these sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle ideological shifts as England moves from an aristocratic, feudal society to a middle-class, capitalistic one—that is, to a society very like our own.

We will read comedies from the era written by both women and men. We will ground ourselves in useful comedic theory. We will study and apply to the plays specific critical methodologies, such as feminism and cultural materialism. We will also compare early modern stage comedies to the film comedy of today. You will write informal textual response papers as well as longer formal critical essays. Your active contribution to classroom discussions will be essential to our venture, too.

English 302 (Topics in Literary Theory): Postmarxism and the Literature of Work

Hard work = Success.

Yes? No? Maybe? It depends?

Our senior seminar will investigate the American Dream. Since you’ll soon be graduating from college and, by tradition, stepping out into that Free Market of ours, it might not be a bad idea to get a sense of what you’re in for.

Pyramidal hierarchy or level playing field?

We’ll study literary, cultural, and economic theory relevant to this task. We’ll apply that theory to literary and filmic works from the 19th through the 21st centuries. We’ll explore questions such as the following. Does the 99% have legitimate complaints? Are the “job creators” misunderstood philanthropists? Is the business of America business? Or is government there to protect the individual from corporations? And just where does one draw the line between democracy and plutocracy? (If you have no idea of what’s being talked about, then you really ought to take this course before you graduate.)

As for workload, you’ll write several small position papers, a couple of medium-length critical essays, and a longer seminar paper. You’ll also need to demonstrate in class discussions that you’ve read well and contemplated genuinely every text we consider.

English 400 (Senior Seminar): Postmodern Monsters

Our seminar will explore Monster Theory: a method of reading cultures through the monsters they engender. We’ll consider such issues as what constitutes the monstrous? Who gets to decide? What might monsters represent within a given culture? Do monsters seem to share certain characteristics across cultural and temporal boundaries? And why to humans create these objects of fear and hatred? What social or psychological function do monsters serve?

We will read and interpret monster books (e.g. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Albert Sanchez Piñol’s Cold Skin). We will watch and analyze monster movies (e.g. King Kong and District 9). We will read monster theory (e.g. Jeffrey Cohen and Judith Halberstam) as well as selected postmodern critical theory (e.g. Foucault and Butler) as we consider the various aspects of the monstrous. Therefore, our class will be a theory-intensive seminar where primary sources in critical theory are read and discussed, and then those theories are applied and tested out on literary and filmic texts.

With regard to workload, there will be lots of interesting textuality to read and discuss. Very active classroom participation, therefore, will be a must. You will write several short, informal papers to help you learn the course material. You will undertake two longer, formal essays of 6-8 pages. The course will culminate in one longer semester paper (15-ish pages) where you demonstrate your abject brilliance.

Our monsters define us by constructing the not-us. But remember, in someone else’s eyes, we might be the monster.